


The Greatest Mistress is Devotion

by nnail



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cults, Horror, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 12:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19425565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnail/pseuds/nnail
Summary: Mr. Headman believes in his work. That makes it easier. Easier to do and easier to love.





	The Greatest Mistress is Devotion

In the darkness of the basement, blood soaking his shirtsleeves Mr. Headmen took a moment to consider the morality of the situation. 

He knew it was wrong obviously, in an existential way. It’s easy to say what’s right and wrong on a grand scale, but the realities of daily life necessitated small exceptions to big rules. 

This man, for example, no sorry not that one – the crying one. That man, if his information was correct, was not strictly allowed to eat pork. But of course, when the winter came there was that food shortage, and pork was just about the only thing available. Surely his god would forgive him for indulging. After all, there’s no use in being a god if there’s no one around to worship you. 

Now, Mr. Headmen was not a mad man. He knew, of course, he knew, that eating pork to survive and committing mass murder were generally on two different levels when it came to ethics.   
But on the other hand, if you think about it, pigs are rather smart, aren’t they? Some of the smarter ones might even have a bit of sentience. And besides that, they’re living things. Whose to say that their lives are worth less than a man’s? Just because man eats them? He doesn’t have too, there’s beef, and chicken, and lamb, even horse if you’re pagan enough. 

Mr. Headmen thought that was a sound argument, but probably not one that would hold up in a court of law.

But it’s not like he didn’t have a reason. In fact, he thought he had the most important reason of all. Given enough blood, he could raise the true God, and then they could start over, and everyone could eat whatever they wanted, even pork. With the true God under his control, he could even stop death. What're a dozen lives over the whole of all life?

You see? There are always exceptions. 

His current focus, the crying man, was lying on the floor begging for his life. This is a behavior he’d seen many times before. The human brain is incapable of reason in the face of true fear. It defaults into one of several preset reactions. This was his favorite, to him it was proof that men were killing men from the very beginning. You’d never try to appeal to the better angels of a tiger.   
No, this response was meant specifically to remind the attacker that this was a fellow human he was preying on. If he was a different sort of man, one who valued life above all things, or even one who doubted his convictions just a little, this pathetic display might have had an effect. But he’d been doing this too long now to be won over by the pleading of a dead man. 

He leaned over the body, stroking his hair. 

“I promise I’ll make it as quick and painless as I can, but if you squirm, you’ll make it impossible.”

He looked deeply into the man’s eyes; this was the most interesting part. Whatever they saw in him eventually they would realize that this was the most mercy he was capable of giving. He lived for that change, from panic to anger, to sad acceptance. 

“There’s a good lad”

He straddled the man, and he closed his eyes. Mr. Headmen gave a final tug on the ropes, he’d seen dying men do crazy things, it’s important to always be prepared.   
And now it’s time. He adjusted; he’d promised he’d make it quick. He got into position, raised the knife above his head and-

Stopped it right before breaching the skin.   
He looked down, making sure he’d got the right angle to hit the heart. He had. The man was really sobbing now. 

“Sorry lad, I’m not trying to torture you. Measure twice, cut once, as the saying goes. For real this time then”

The man didn’t have time to react. The knife was up and down again in less than a second, and this time it plunged straight through his skin, past the muscle. He was fairly certain he’d struck between the ribs but put the full weight of his body into it just in case. 

The man stared in shock. They always seem to think they’re going to get out of it, even when they know they won’t. 

“Almost there”

He pulled the knife out quick, spraying more blood onto his clothes and the dying man’s face. This was the easy bit; the man’s heart was beating so fast it was gone in no time at all. He made sure to angle the body so the blood could flow easily into the drain. 

He stood and looked out into the darkness of the basement once more. 

“Who wants to go next?”


End file.
